Star Wars: Episode 7

There were a lot of exciting toys announced yesterday during the epic 18-hour Star Wars Force Friday reveals, but none as exciting as the BB-8 toy from Sphero. We’ve been gushing about BB-8 since Star Wars Celebration and counting down the days until we could own one. And now that the day is here, it is perhaps even more fun than we imagined.

In the tradition of ScreenCrush series like You Think You Know Movies, You Think You Know TV, and Post Credits comes a brand new YouTube series: Top Five! Each week (or so; we’ve got a lot of other stuff going on), ScreenCrush editor and critic Matt Singer will count down a particular topic from the world of movies (and probably write these introductory posts in the third person).

As both Comic-Con and D23 went by without a new Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer we were left to wonder when exactly we’d see the next footage from the upcoming. Well, get ready. That time is now. “Have you felt it?”

We’ve known for a long time that Star Wars: The Force Awakens would screen in IMAX theaters because director J.J. Abrams filmed one key sequence with IMAX cameras. But now, we’ve learned the full extent of Disney and Lucasfilm’s plans for large format presentation and it’s exactly what you’d expect from a studio that has the most popular movie franchise on the planet and the power to do whatever it wants with it. The new Star Wars movie has booked pretty much every IMAX screen in the world for four weeks. Everyone with the desire to see this movie on the biggest movie screens in the world now has plenty of time to do so.

Just when you thought we might be done with Star Wars news today — nope! The glorious internet has provided us with our first legitimate look at Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker in The Force Awakens, and he looks like he’s aged quite nicely into a wizened Jedi.

It should come as no surprise that fancy new limited editions of the original six Star Wars movies are hitting Blu-ray later this year. Did you think Disney and Lucasfilm weren’t going to do everything in their power to wring every last penny out of this devoted fan base? After all, everything about Star Wars: The Force Awakens has us weak in the knees. We have never been more vulnerable to large corporations exploiting our love. And now we know what love looks like: a series of very cool steelbook Blu-rays, complete with new art.

Harrison Ford might be a superhero. This, according to Star Wars: The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams, who was on set for Ford’s unfortunate accident last year, when a hydraulic door broke his leg. (As Abrams’ describes it in the clip above, his ankle was at a, gulp, 90-degree angle to the rest of his body. Ew.) Thankfully, Ford was okay. Then he later got into a plane crash and was mostly okay after that too. Because, again, Harrison Ford is a superhero.

It's a Star Wars tradition to participate in a splashy Vanity Fair cover shoot by famed photographer Annie Liebowitz and Star Wars: Episode 7 is no different (although it almost was: rumors were that J.J. Abrams wanted to buck that tradition, but Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was able to talk him into it). The cast and crew of The Force Awakens are on the cover of the upcoming June issue and while even more photos will be revealed, we do get our first look at Adam Driver without his Kylo Ren mask and Lupita Nyong’o’s motion-capture character!

If there were any lingering doubts about the popularity of Star Wars in the year 2015, Star Wars Celebration killed them. Ruthlessly. When the the live-streamed panel for Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiered the second trailer for J.J. Abrams’ wildly anticipated sequel, you could feel the internet quiver and shake underneath the weight of the hype. It was a staggering event that made the next few geek-friendly trailers released in the following days feel like small potatoes in comparison. And yes, this hyperbole is backed up by raw numbers: the second trailer for The Force Awakens shattered the record for most trailer views in 24 hours.

The brand new Star Wars: Episode 7 trailer premiered this morning at Star Wars Celebration, as J.J. Abrams and the film’s cast showed off the footage to a packed audience of hardcore Star Wars fans. But, you don't have to be in Anaheim to get a new look at The Force Awakens: we've got the trailer for you right here, right now!